Monika Gisler

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• PhD
• Lecturer at ETH Zurich

We present an analysis of a large emerging scientific project in the light provided by the social bubbles hypothesis (SBH) that we have introduced in earlier papers. The SBH claims that, during an innovation boom or technological revolution, strong social interactions between enthusiastic supporters weave a network of reinforcing feedbacks that lea...

Remedy for Shortage or Risk for National Security? The Search for Oil in Switzerland. Over several decades, geologists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and public authorities dealt with a potential petroleum occurrence in Switzerland. They provided scientific expertise, granted concessions, invested capital and sank bore holes. Although the endeavour w...

Over several decades, geologists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and public authorities dealt with a potential petroleum occurrence in Switzerland. They provided scientific expertise, granted concessions, invested capital and sank bore holes. Although the endeavour was never successful economically, it reveals how closely related geopolitical situatio...

Der Energiesektor hat sich in den letzten 150 Jahren dramatisch schnell entwickelt. Nicht nur haben sich Produktion und Verbrauch um ein Vielfaches erhöht, auch die wirtschaftlichen, rechtlichen und gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen haben sich grundlegend gewandelt. Ein kurzer historischer Rückblick zeigt die grossen Entwicklungen und Trends auf...

In der Innovationsforschung wird vermehrt darauf hingewiesen, dass das Verhältnis von Risiko (risk) und Belohnung (reward) gesellschaftlich nicht adäquat verteilt ist. Während der Staat Risiken auf sich nehme, sei der private Sektor der Nutzniesser, der den damit einhergehenden Gewinn einstreiche Diese These wird am Beispiel der frühen Kerntechnolo...

In this paper we present an analysis of a major scientific project in the making with the goal of testing our ‘social bubbles’ hypothesis. This framework claims that strong social interactions between enthusiastic supporters of a project weave a network based on positive feedback, leading to widespread endorsement and extraordinary commitment by th...

We review the “social bubble” hypothesis, which holds that strong social interactions between enthusiastic supporters of new ventures weave a network of reinforcing feedbacks that lead to a widespread endorsement and extraordinary commitment by those involved in the projects, beyond what would be rationalized by a standard cost-benefit analysis in...

We present a detailed synthesis of the development of the Human Genome Project (HGP) from 1986 to 2003 in order to test the "social bubble" hypothesis that strong social interactions between enthusiastic supporters of the HGP weaved a network of reinforcing feedbacks that led to a widespread endorsement and extraordinary commitment by those involve...

We present an analysis of the economic, political and social factors that underlay the Apollo program, one of the most exceptional and costly projects ever undertaken by the United States in peacetime that culminated in 1969 with the first human steps on the Moon. This study suggests that the Apollo program provides a vivid illustration of a societ...

Within historical times one of the most damaging events in intra-plate Europe was the 1356 Basel earthquake. Given its significance for assessing regional seismic hazard in central Europe, an interdisciplinary project was launched in 2005 to re-explore this event. Our effort aimed to incorporate techniques from history, seismology, archaeology, pal...

We present an analysis of the economic, political and social factors that underlay the Apollo program, one of the most exceptional and costly projects ever undertaken by the United States in peacetime that culminated in 1969 with the first human steps on the Moon. This study suggests that the Apollo program provides a vivid illustration of a societ...

The first attempts to establish macroseismic intensity reach back to the 17th century. But it was not until the late 19th century that seismic intensity scales, tectonic faults and individual types of seismic waves were routinely studied and recorded. Observational seismology, macroseismic observation and earthquake classification in the early 19th...

We focus on Swiss earthquakes in antiquity and the early medieval period before A.D. 1000. We have information on less than half a dozen earthquakes within this era, since written records for the first half of the first millennium A.D. are minimal, and there is little hope of finding more written evidence for earthquakes. Furthermore, interpreting...

Betr. u.a. die Korrespondenz zwischen Johann I Bernoulli und Johann Jakob sowie Johannes Scheuchzer über die Erklärung von Erdbeben.

The 1855 earthquake at Visp remains the strongest in the last 300 yr in Switzerland. It caused heavy damage in the region of the middle Valais. We reconstructed the damage field of this event studying also site effects and building vulnerability. The key factors in such a study are the availability and accessibility of sufficient historical data. G...

The 2003 Ml = 5.4 Rambervillers earthquake, north-east of France, is the largest seismic event recorded north of the Alps since the 1992 Ms = 5.3, I0 = VII, Roermond earthquake, Netherlands. With a maximum macroseismic intensity of VI-VII EMS-98, the 2003 event was broadly felt to a distance of 300 km from the epicentre. It provides a unique opport...

Assessments of major natural disasters usually emerge long after the event, in larger contexts of interpretation. Yet we might ask whether such events did not also act as structural, transcending moments, transferring semantic structures or breaking them up. The reaction to the 1755 Lisbon disaster is key to this discussion. Researchers today gener...

The earthquake on December 9, 1755 is one of the major events in the Valais region, having an important influence on the seismic hazard assessment of the area. The re-evaluation of the event was undertaken in the course of upgrading the Earthquake Catalog of Switzerland (ECOS). It is now based on a newly investigated and reliable database created t...

This report of the Swiss Seismological Service summarizes the seismic activity in Switzerland and surrounding regions during 2003. During this period, 532 earthquakes and 118 quarry blasts were detected and located in the region under consideration. With 30 events with M L ≥ 2.5, the seismic activity in the year 2003 was slightly above the average...

An overview of seismic activity in Central Switzerland is presented. As earthquake activity has been very low for the time period of modern instrumental observation, we focus on the largest known earthquakes in the historical past (September 18, 1601, September 10, 1774, January 23, 1775, and the swarms of 1777 and 1964). The epicenters of these ev...

Upgrading the Earthquake Catalog of Switzerland (ECOS) included revising the earthquake of 1720. This change has major importance for history and seismology.Although that quake has been the subject of several publications, none was based on critical methods. This re-evaluation of the event is built upon a new and more reliable database established...

Historical seismology cannot rely on instrumental measurement alone; investigation depends mainly on the evaluation of historical sources. Improving the quality of historical data underlying macroseismic and seismological parameters has been proposed as a desideratum. As a consequence, the investigation and interpretation of historical documents ha...

The reassessment of the 1795 and 1796 earthquakes is part of the upgrade of the Earthquake Catalogue of Switzerland (ECOS). It is of major importance with respect to both history and seismology. Although the events have been the subject of a large number of publications, none of these studies was based on critical methods. The re-evaluation of the...

The Swiss historical earthquake catalogue and the macroseismic database have not been significantly improved since 1978. We therefore revised the catalogue and concluded this work in 2002. Three levels of investigation were conducted, depending on the size and location of an event: historical, macroseismic and seismological. For the earthquakes of...